Upcoming Films of Interest

[Lancemc]

Laputa being my second favorite of their films, I'm pretty damn excited.

Lance, is this the movie you've already seen or is this another upcoming?

Another upcoming. The one I watched recently was Arietty, based on The Borrowers.

 

[powerhour24]

I'm... white.

Hahaha, fucking AutoCorrect, but at least it made for a killer Arrested Development reference, so all is well.

 

[LMP]

Oh, god, me too.

The Fass!

 

[Lancemc]

News: Here's The Teaser Trailer For Tsui Hark's 3D Wu Xia Film - FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE!

Hawww... yeaaaaaah

 

[bono_212]

Another upcoming. The one I watched recently was Arietty, based on The Borrowers.

Oh that's excellent. Now I really can't wait to see it. No idea why I hadn't yet looked to see what it was about.

That Borrorwers film that came out years ago was a favorite of my cousin and I. I'd probably be embarrassed of it now.

 

[powerhour24]

Hell. Fucking. Yes.

John Carter - Movie Trailers - iTunes

 

[Lancemc]

That looks abysmal.

 

[powerhour24]

Your face looks abysmal. I think it looks like they've captured the novel quite well.

 

[Lancemc]

News: New Director, Reduced Budget For 'Re-envisioned' AKIRA

Could be really cool.

 

[bono_212]

. I just hate when certain movies get redone, and I've never understood the point of remaking an animated film.

 

[lazarus]

I loved Orphan, FWIW.

 

[Lancemc]

I loved Orphan, FWIW.

Jaume Collet-Serra is a really talented dude. I didn't love Orphan, but it showed the work of a surprisingly adventurous filmmaker. Unknown on the other hand is still probably the best genre picture I've seen this year. Fantastic.

Anyway, regarding Akira, I love quite a few sequences from the film, but never quite got all the hosannas. Kind of a sloppy, patchwork adaptation that doesn't quite stand up as a full feature film, I feel. I certainly don't begrudge someone else trying to reshape the original 6-volume manga masterwork into a new live action piece. I think the potential choice of director and more limited budget could force a number of really exciting creative decisions that probably wouldn't have otherwise occurred with the original plan for production.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

That's an awful lot of optimism there Lance, I love Akira the way it is - as fucked up as it is...

This remake interests me but at the same time terrifies me...

 

[bono_212]

Is it going to be live action?

 

[Lancemc]

Talented guy working on strong source material. Even if it's a complete disaster I don't see (and rarely do) what the big fuss is over remakes anyway. And yeah it's going to be live-action, and the original vision a few years back was to make it a two-part re-imagining based on the original manga material, so it's not even a remake per se.

 

[bono_212]

Ok, I'm more interested now.

 

[Lancemc]

Aye. I think the animated Akira was an extremely condensed retelling of the first 2 or 3 books (I honestly don't remember the exact sequence of events in the novels), so the fact that they were at least considering going back to the source for the live-action adaptation, if they still, means it could result in something fairly different to the animated feature. Merely putting it in live-action with a constrained budget would be enough to do that, but yeah.

Also everyone should check out Unknown, though I've talked about it before. Easily enjoy it more than all three Bourne films, and a lot of the other similar thrillers of recent years, Taken included.

 

[powerhour24]

Unknown, .

 

[lazarus]

Shit pants/move to queue.

 

[Lancemc]

News: Baffling First Trailer For Takashi Shimizu And Christopher Doyles RABBIT HORROR 3D

Yeah.

And I'll just repost this here since they're tangentially related in a way

‪The Grand Master 一代宗師 (1st Trailer)‬‏ - YouTube

 

[purpleoscar]

‪Hugo - Official Trailer [HD]‬‏ - YouTube

Scorsese kids film? At least it's got Borat.

‪Amazing Spider-Man Trailer (Official Trailer 2012 720p HD)‬‏ - YouTube

Hopefully it's better than part 3.

 

[lazarus]

I can't imagine it being worse.

 

[bono_212]

Their's a trailer?

I'm actually on-board for this new Muppet movie, for the record.

 

[powerhour24]

I'm so pumped for this reboot, being more in line with the characters, using the Ultimate comics for reference, and such a great cast lead by Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

 

[LMP]

Sam Raimi > Marc Webb. That'll make all of the difference.

 

[powerhour24]

Sam Raimi is awesome at make cheesy purposely ridiculous movies. All we know of Webb in terms of feature storytelling is one film, but his visual sensibilities are clearly versatile from his decade+ of making music video.

Screenplay (this is written by Zodiac's James Vanderbilt, the original was written by David Koepp), tone, and cast play a huge part. Spider-Man 2 was excellent, (though, and I'm not a hater of McGuire, he was never really Peter Parker) the first one was cheesy as hell (and not in a good way like his horror projects), and while I respect more aspects of the 3rd than most, there's no denying it was a mess. I do wish they had gotten a part 4 to clean it up and give it a real ending, but from the buzz surrounding the preproduction prior to its cancellation, the studio was going to make it another mess, this is probably for the best.

Spider-Man has been the best selling superhero since his introduction, I'm all for letting multiply interpretations exist in live action.

 

[bono_212]

I love Spider-Man so much, I say this every time it gets brought up. I watched that trailer, and as much as I didn't want this reboot to happen, I was super excited right until they went into the cheesy video game looking first person perspective. I hope that's either not in the movie or not in the movie very much.

 

[powerhour24]

I think the POV stuff could be pretty damn cool in native 3D. But I wouldn't worry about it being there too much, the big word from behind the scenes is how much of this is done with live stunts, much less focus on CG Spidey compared to Raimi's.

 

[Lancemc]

I think the trailer's kind of OK, though Spidey has always been my preferred major superhero property. Anyway, the more POV the better. Let's get all De Palma up in this bitch.

 

[LMP]

Sam Raimi is awesome at make cheesy purposely ridiculous movies. All we know of Webb in terms of feature storytelling is one film, but his visual sensibilities are clearly versatile from his decade+ of making music video.

Screenplay (this is written by Zodiac's James Vanderbilt, the original was written by David Koepp), tone, and cast play a huge part. Spider-Man 2 was excellent, (though, and I'm not a hater of McGuire, he was never really Peter Parker) the first one was cheesy as hell (and not in a good way like his horror projects), and while I respect more aspects of the 3rd than most, there's no denying it was a mess. I do wish they had gotten a part 4 to clean it up and give it a real ending, but from the buzz surrounding the preproduction prior to its cancellation, the studio was going to make it another mess, this is probably for the best.

Spider-Man has been the best selling superhero since his introduction, I'm all for letting multiply interpretations exist in live action.

Raimi's sensibilities fit the material well for the most part. The first film has its share of flaws, tack it to the origin story or tonal issues, whatever you want. It's still a fairly effervescent and fun superhero flick that entertains and sets up the proper stakes for an eventual series. Spidey 2 not only ratchets up all of that dramatic tension, but does so with a simple, clean narrative and insanely stylish visual sense. The Spidey/Doc Ock train fight alone makes it worthwhile. It works as pure pulp and as straight drama. The third film was the unfortunate by-product of a studio/director creative clash... but it at least has more ambition behind it than most of this sub-genre's output.

The best live-action superhero features (Spidey 2, X2, Batman Returns, TDK, Superman/Superman II) all had some unifying vision either from the director or producer. I don't see a similar force behind The Amazing Spider-Man besides studio interest in keeping the property under their umbrella, doing it cheaply, and attracting hot talent.

I think the cast is talented, I think James Vanderbilt is a talented screenwriter, and Marc Webb is an able director. 500 Days of Summer has its share of music video stylistic flourishes; it's also terribly uneven and collapses under the weight of its own pretentiousness. There's good stuff to be found in there though.

Rebooting/rejiggering/restarting a series after one ends or shifting the creative gears sounds fantastic in principle. Like you said, it feels in line with comic runs and there always many iterations of a story to be told. It's alright for me to remain cynical toward it actually being worthwhile.

I think the trailer's kind of OK, though Spidey has always been my preferred major superhero property. Anyway, the more POV the better. Let's get all De Palma up in this bitch.

I'm gonna bawl like a baby when Martin Sheen's Uncle Ben dies. The MS would've gotten Bartlet anyway.

It's funny you bring up De Palma. When my buddy and I did our "Marvel in the '70s" casting, we had him pegged to do the Spidey joint, opted for George Lucas instead. De Palma got Ghost Rider. It may be the geekiest thing that I've ever done, bookshelf humping notwithstanding.